The Legal Beat

The Bar Exam Of The Future Is Coming — And It Won’t Be All About Memorization
Posted on Wednesday December 02, 2020

There will be change. Change is hard. And it’s especially hard when we’ve got a model of a state-by-state licensing and testing process. It may not be possible to make everyone happy. But we have definitely listened and considered everything we’ve heard.

— Kellie Early, chief strategy officer for the National Conference of Bar Examiners, commenting on changes that will eventually be coming to the bar exam through the organization’s Testing Task Force. Early has hinted that the bar exam of the future will be computer-based and that lawyering skills, rather than rote memorization skills, will be focused on. “It will be different in what it tests and how it tests. I don’t think it’s going to be something that is unrecognizable to our stakeholders,” she went on to say. “But I think it will be more changed than potentially some people are expecting. We’ve heard that some people think [the Testing Task Force] is not going to lead to any change. To them I’d say: ‘I hope we haven’t spent the past three years and all the work and effort that has gone into this for naught.'”

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

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